Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 32:29

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? - Exodus 32:29

- So ladies and gentlemen, the music we just heard was from Shostakovich, “The Gadfly,” “Romance from the Gadfly.” And now from something musical, we turn back to dear old Moses and his battle with the children of Israel and with the Almighty. I want to start Exodus 32, chapter, oh, sorry, chapter 32 and verse 29. The situation is that Moses has come down after from the mountain. And we see that in his anger, he decides to call on the tribe of Levi to get rid of the ringleaders. It’s not a very nice episode, because nobody likes to see people killed. And the whole attitude to killing has gone through different phases. Although, unfortunately, as we see today, people get killed for no good reason all the time. And here the issue essentially is that the children of Israel, by accepting the golden calf, have basically rejected God. It’s this cataclysmic rejection of God that is really at the root of this crisis, because basically, it’s a negation of everything that has happened since the Exodus. I mentioned last time that in one way, it was surprising that from this event, then calling on the Levites to get rid of the ringleaders, there only 3000 men involved in this. Whereas according to the Bible, there were 100,000 of 600,000 out there. And maybe more, of course, Ben-Gurion thought there were many less. But that’s a different issue altogether.

And then the following day, we are at verse 30. “The following day, Moses calls the people together and he declares to them, ‘You have done a terrible thing.’” Now, who did the terrible thing? Is it the 3000 people who have just been killed the ringleaders? Or is it assuming that everybody else was carried away and everybody else maybe not have been the instigators, but they participated in this negation and denial of God? So you have, he says, “You have done something wrong.” And in doing something wrong, you have of course rejected God. But then the question arises, why are the rest of the people going to be in a sense punished? Because in effect, there’s going to be a plague that’s going to impact absolutely everybody. But it says, Moshe says to the people, “You have committed a sin.” “I’m going back up to God to try to atone.” What lies behind this? Is for the first notion that they have of when they’ve done something wrong and betrayed leadership. In the world that existed at that time, they had to face the punishments. They had to atone in some way. And up to now, we have not dealt with the whole issue of what is the nature of God? What do we mean by God? And what do we expect of God to do? And the idea is that God can forgive. And as I’ve mentioned before, this can be understood on two levels. You can understand it as God defining God. But if we either don’t believe in God, or don’t understand God, we have to see this in terms of God represents a human ideal. And basically, this is teaching us the ideal of forgiveness. So if God can forgive us, we have to learn how to forgive other people, which of course is easier said than done. So he says, “I’m going up to God to try to atone.” And then Moses in verse 31 says, “God, please, the people have sinned. They’ve sinned a big sin.

They are and they have made a golden calf.” And this is used as the basis for saying, when you confess to having done something wrong, you’ve got to own it. You’ve got to specify what is it that you have done that you shouldn’t have done. But not only that, it emphasises the idea that in knowing and owning what we’ve done, it is the first step in wiping the slate clean, so to speak. So it’s owning up. And this is what’s happening up here. 32, “If You will please forgive their sin, everything’s going to be okay, the Mayan and if not, rub me out, blot me out from your book which You have written.” Okay, now there are several things here that are interesting. Let’s start with the word chet. Chet is normally translated as a sin. And there are several words in the Torah that are used for sin. There’s the word chet. And chet literally means to miss the mark. So in modern Hebrew, when we say , you have failed to achieve what you set out to do, it’s missing the mark. Like when you take an arrow and you fire it at the bullseye, you’ve missed it. Okay, you’ve missed it. Then you can put that right by trying a second time and doing a better job. The next word is averah. Averah comes from the root la'avah, to pass off, to go off the track. You were on the right path, then you took a step that led you off the path. And therefore, if necessary, you step back again. Then there is pesha. Pesha is another word in which describes failure. You fail to reach your target, you fell short.

And then there is Avon, which literally means something’s missing here, something is lacking. Each one of these words for sin that’s used in the Torah in effect is saying, it’s not final. When you’ve done something wrong, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t despair, don’t give up. Just try again to do it better the next time. And so the use of the word chet here and the language around it is telling us something about making mistakes and then how we put these mistakes right. But what’s interesting is that Moses himself is putting himself on the line and saying, you know, “If You’re not going to forgive these people, and we’re not going forward, I don’t want to be part of this, get rid of me.” And of course the question then is, what does it mean blot me out of Your book, which You have written? What book has God written? Well, up to now, the only term that we’ve had that’s relevant is earlier on in Exodus, we talked about Sefer HaBrit, the Book of the Covenant. This is before the 10 Commandments have been given. This is the covenant between the children of Israel and God in essentially to accept God as their authority. Now, what is Moses saying when he says, “Blot me out of the book?” Is he saying, “I don’t want to be part of this venture?” Does it mean, “I don’t want to be part of the deal with You, God?” It’s almost as though he is threatening God and saying, you know, “If You’re not going to forgive us, then, you know, I don’t want to be part of the world. I don’t only be part of You.” It’s a very dramatic thing for Moses to say if you think about what he’s saying. The question of a covenant is a two-way thing as any deal is. It’s two-way. I’ll do this for you, if you do this for me, and we will work on something together. And therefore, it does imply a kind of a partnership. And again, is this partnership a partnership with God?

Or is it partnership with the world, with the universe? I’m part of the universe, and I want things to work well. And if they don’t, I don’t want to be part of this mess. Verse 34, God replies. Verse 33, “God says to Moses, ‘Whoever has done something wrong to me, I will blot him out.’” He’s no longer part of the contract. So He’s saying, you know, you haven’t done anything wrong to me, so I’m not going to blot you out of of the contract. But on the other hand, there are people who have let me down and I will respond. But as for you, I’m accepting this. It’s interesting. The word in 32 for forgiveness is, if you will forgive. Now, tisa literally means to lift up, or to carry a burden, or to own something. It’s also interesting, there’s a root there of nissuin. Nissuin is marriage. Marriage when two people come together, they should try to forgive each other’s limitations, but essentially work together. So that’s another interesting lakheit. The word laseit to forgive has multiple meanings, but nothing is final. In other words, the notion that we are in a state of sin is not really something that figures in Jewish theology. We don’t believe that we are born evil, that we are in a state of sin. We believe that we human beings can do good things and we can do bad things. The expression that’s used is yetzer, a tendency. We have a yetzer ha-tov, a good tendency. And a yetzer ha, a bad tendency. So this tendency is what drives us to make the wrong decision, not that we are intrinsically bad or wicked. And therefore, we are dealing with decisions, making right decisions as opposed to wrong decisions. And so in verse 34. And now says God, “We’re going forward.” So the past is a past, we’re going forward. “Lead the people, I spoke to you and I gave you the order to lead them.” Now this can be translated as my angel will go in front of me, or my messenger will go in front of me. “And beyond pokti, when the day of reckoning comes, I will deal with each person according to their sin.” This is a very interesting word, paqad ati, lift God. You remember that in the 10 Commandments, there’s this famous phrase, “Visiting the sins of the fathers.”

And yet as we know, Deuteronomy has the law which says, “Sons don’t die for what fathers do. Fathers don’t die for what sons do. Each person has to make his or her own reckoning.” So what does the term paqad mean? It’s translated to visit sometimes, but I think its root is consequence. There are consequences. Consequences of bad parents producing sometimes bad children or making life difficult for their children. Children, if you like having the gift of good parents and suffering from having bad parents, this is not punishment, but it’s consequence. So the consequence is in verse 35. “God played the people who had made the calf, which Aaron had made.” So we are iterating Aaron’s culpability and guilt in this whole process. But of course, Aaron also gets forgiven, and he doesn’t get plagued, which again seems to be a bit unfair, giving special treatment to Aaron. But there we have the second phase. The first phase was the ringleaders, which the priest got rid of. And now, everybody is having a plague. Now a plague doesn’t necessarily mean they were all killed, but a plague was some sort of physical response, a reminder. Almost you might say it’s psychosomatic. And that ends chapter 32. So now we come on to chapter 33, which is interesting, because it’s going to give us the first hint of the nature of God. But before we get there, number one, 33, number one. “God says to Moses, ‘Okay, let’s get out of here. This is bad calm, not a happy place. You and the people, which you took out of Egypt to the land, which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saying, 'To your seed, I will give it.’” In which case, if I can go back for a minute, what did it mean when God says that, “I am going to send my messenger ahead to take you out of this?” Now the term messenger can mean malach, can mean a messenger in order of human being. It’s also used an describe angels. But the problem is that angelology, as we understand it, is a phenomenon that emerged in Judaism from Babylon rather than before that.

And therefore, the term normally used is messenger. And messenger is a person, which is why, for example, when Jacob wrestles, so-called with the angel, the angel is described as an ish, as a man, not as somebody with wings and looking with a hail around his or her head. So here what God is basically saying, “You are my messenger to take these people into the next phase.” But still Moses is uncertain, insecure about his relationship with God. So God says, “Look, I promise this land, these people are going to get to the land. Not going to argue about that. And you are going to lead them,” but not necessarily into the land as we know later, “but you are going to lead them in this voyage.” So in verse 2, “I’m sending my angel ahead, and I’m going to expel all these tribes that are living in the land of Canaan, Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.” It’s interesting, we normally talk about the seven Canaanite tribes, and here we’ve just got six of them. “And driving them out, I’m going to take you into this land flowing with milk and honey. And I am not going to come with you on this passage, because you are a stiff-necked people. And I get so upset. There’s a serious danger I might destroy you,” says God. Sounds rather sort of human of God. But basically God is saying, look, “I’m going to keep my promise, but somehow I’m not as engaged with you as I was.” So everything that’s going to happen is going to happen through human agency, through Moses, through your own fighting, and I am taking a step back. Verse 4, “When the people heard this declaration that God is pulling back, they went into mourning. They were so desperate. They went into this state of mourning.” And they removed all jewellery, all decoration from them. And this is a statement that is going to be repeated. And this actually is the basis of the tradition that Jewish men don’t wear jewellery. Something that is a problem, because particularly in America, married men as opposed to wear a ring.

And I was brought up not to, my father didn’t wear a wearing a wedding ring. There was no male jewellery. And yet in America, if you don’t have a wedding ring, they think you’re not married. Well, you know, my point is too bad. I don’t wear a wedding ring, and I am definitely married. So in verse 5, “God says to Moses, ‘tell the children of Israel, or if you are a stiff-necked people, aren’t we just have we not been the whole of our life? We are so argumentative. We are so split. We are so divided.’” In one moment, I could get rid of you. And this is repeating what we’ve said before. “I want you to take off your jewellery.” Repeating what we’ve said up there. “And then I’ll make up my mind what I’m going to do.” And as a result of this, I’m sorry, I’m just going to. And as a result of this, they stopped wearing jewellery from Mount Horeb onwards. Three times it stated. And here you have, if you like, a declaration of the continuity of this, that the male no longer wore jewellery. The question then is what is Moses going to do? What’s he going to do about this relationship with God? We go through verse, I’m sorry, I just lost the place that I was looking to go to. And I have, it’s verse 7 of Exodus 33. In verse 7, “Moses then, he takes the tent.” Now there’s an argument as to what tent this is. Is this the tabernacle? Has the tabernacle already been built before this event? Or does it not refer to the tabernacle? It refers only to his private residence. So let’s assume for the moment it’s his private residence. “And he takes it out of the camp, and sets it beyond the boundaries of the camp.” So that in a sense, he’s distancing himself. “A distance away from the camp. And he called this Ohel Moed,” the tent of the meeting place, which is exactly what the tabernacle was supposed to be. “And it would be that anybody who wanted to meet God or to ask something of God, or encounter God, would go out to this tent out of the camp beyond the camp.”

So in other words, we are saying God doesn’t really want to be in the camp, He is outside the camp. Of course God is everywhere, but we’re now talking about access, and we are talking about Moses removing himself from the centre of the people, which is a strange process. And the question is, is he doing this temporarily or is he doing this permanently? In verse 8, “When Moses would leave the tent, the community, to go to the tent, everybody would go and stand at the entrance to their own tents, and look, following Moses, until he went into the tent.” This is an amazing statement. It’s very often overlooked. But it is part of the traditions of royalty that you follow the king or the queen as they leave. You don’t leave until they leave, and then you follow them out. So this is in a sense, an act of deference to Moses, and respect for Moses. And in fact, those of you who might have been to Hasidic gatherings where the rebbe, the head of each specific dynasty, comes in and walks out. This is exactly how people, the hasidim, the followers follow him. They look at him as he moves in. They look at him as they move out. They follow him. And this is an act of respect that you can see in Judaism today, but you see it everywhere in terms of dignitaries and how we treat them or should treat them. Anyway, so this is Moses. And in verse 9, “When he comes in, into the tent, the pillar of cloud.” We talked about this earlier in the beginning of the Exodus, that they had a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of cloud by night, whenever they were moving, the pillar was taking them. And whenever they stopped, the pillar stopped. And verse 10, “When everybody saw this cloud, over the tent of Moses, everybody got up, and they bowed down a person in front of his own tent.”

So there was this ceremony, they followed him. When he saw him get safely inside of the tent, they all bowed down as an act of obedience. So this is part of, if you like, the process of accepting Moses as the authority, accepting he’s on a different level to everybody else, that he is there for the people, but he is in a sense detached, maybe in the way that they feel God is detached. And that’s where we come now to the next phase. “God spoke to Moses in the tabernacle, face to face, in the same way that a person would speak to his neighbour.” Now that can’t mean literally. First of all, God doesn’t have a face. So in other words, he’s saying the means of communication between God and Moses was on a very, very, on a unique level, a level of almost symbiotic relationship. And here’s a line which is very strange. “His assistant, Joshua son of Nun, Nahr, who is a young man.” He didn’t move out of the tent. He was the bodyguard, the attendant, the assistant. And this is the first hint that Joshua is going to be the man who is going to take over from Moses. Now we have a problem here. And the problem is that before the 10 Commandments, and when they came out of Egypt, they were had to fight for the battle of Amalek. Amalek, the tribe that attacked them for no good reason. The Israelites were not threatening them, and they attacked them from behind the women and the children, the weak. They were the Hamas of those days, if you like. And in the battle, the army of the Israelites who went out to attack them was led by Joshua. Now, you wouldn’t have a general being described as a na'ar, as a young boy. So he was not a young boy in that sense at that moment of time. So either you’ve got a chronological problem, or you have to say that na'ar is not used as a young person, but rather as an assistant.

Anyway, he did not move from the tent. And now we are coming to Moses, coming back to talk to God, to say, look, there’s some unspoken business between us that I want to discuss with you. Verse 12, chapter 33. “And Moshe says to God, re'ei, look, ‘You said to me, God, take this people and deliver them wherever You want to deliver. But You have not told me, who You are sending to be with me.’” In other words, you said, my messenger’s going to go with you. Am I your messenger? Are you coming with me? And if you are, I want to know that You are. “And You, God, have said to me.” And this has two meanings. “I have known you or singled you out by name as being the person that I am closest to. And I have found favour in your eyes. That’s what you have said. And if that’s so, if now I have found favour in your eyes,” in verse 13. “Tell me now, I want to know your way.” Now derech means the way I walk, my life, the way I proceed. In other words, I want to know how God works. I want to know more about God. After all, I have on the mountain, on the burning bush, I’ve had fire describing God. On the mountain, there was fire describing God on Mount Sinai. And you communicated with me. But that doesn’t mean to say that I understand what God is. I want to know what God is. Verse 14, God says, look, “My face will go with you back to your face and presence. I will go with you and I will lead you and. And Moses replies, listen, ‘If Your face is not going with us, I’m telling, we can’t go any further.’” So I don’t want words, I need more than words. Verse 16, “How do I know that I and your people have found favour in your eyes?”

Words are not enough. “If you go with us, what will we be different from anybody else in the universe? If you are not with us.” It’s you being with us that make us a unique people or your special people, or the people with a mission. I don’t like the idea of a chosen people. I like the idea of a mission. And therefore in verse 18, “Moses says to God, ‘Show me who you are.’” Remember after the 10 Commandments, there was a moment at which the people were moving up Mount Sinai and they saw the feet of God, so to speak, but that was an impression. Now he says, “I want to know.” Verse 19, “God replies. God says, I’m going to pass my glory past you.” It’s not going to be me so much as I’m going to find some way of convincing you that I am God. So, “I am going to pass all my glory by you, and I will call the name of God before you.” What does that mean? Very strange to understand what that means. The art scroll. The Sefaria translation gives I’ll proclaim before you the name of God. Does that mean the special name of God? ‘Cause remember, we’ve got all these different names of God. there’s Elohim, there’s El, and there is Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei, which is sometimes translated as Jehovah. So is it declaring my name? What does that do? And it’s interesting that throughout the Bible, name is very important. The name is a reflection of the person, the individual handle of that person. So name doesn’t just mean what you call me, it means who you really are. So, “I will call out in my name, and I will, if you like,” is show my favour, I’ll show I’m committed. “And I will show my mercy, my kindness to those who I want to. But, you can’t see my face.”

You can’t actually see God. So you know this whole idea of I’m going to show you who I am is not going to show you what I am. I can only give you some inkling of the power of God if only you will open up to it. So in verse 20, “You cannot see my face, because no living human can.” And I don’t like the translation which says, “No human can see me and live.” Implying if you see me, you’re going to die. I don’t think it means that. It means humans are not able to see in the way humans see what God is, 'cause God is not human. So don’t expect to, I can only give you an impression. And the truth of the matter is that is true of us all today who have a relationship with God in whichever way we do. We know we’re not actually seeing God, but we are getting a sense of something within ourselves, of something beyond, of something almost supernatural. “So what am I going to do?” Says God.“ In verse 21, I’m going to find you a crack in the rock. I’m going to find you somewhere where you’ll be in a crack and not outside in the open. Verse 22, "As my glory passes by you, I will put you in this, this cleft in the rock. I will place my hand over you, until I pass.” Very strange idea this. So you will be in a crack, you will be in a sense, some sort of filament will be obscuring what you can see.

But when as I pass by. But in verse 23, “I will take my hand away, and you’ll see the back of me as I pass by my front or my real me, they will not see,” or it will not be seen, because panai panim is a plural word faces. Because as we mentioned previously, we all have different faces. And this is an example of a plural word, which is quite common in the Torah water. There’s no word for face. There are faces. There’s no word for water, there is waters. And similarly, when we talk about Elohim, which looks like a plural name for God, it’s really a single one. And the verb with it is a single verb. So this is what is going to happen, and this is what in effect happened. Strange thing. So this is the only description in the Torah that we get of God, that God is not something that we can see in the way we would see as a human being. We can get an afterimage, an impression of, a sense of. And that sense should be enough to convince you, but you are not going to get any more scientific evidence, documentation on what the nature of God is. So Moses saw something that we didn’t see. That’s to say Moses level of understanding the nature of God was unique. We can find our own unique relationship with God. And that in a sense is the epiphany, if you like, to borrow a term from Christianity. The epiphany of human beings with God that we are in a sense witness to. And it’s up to us whether we want to go down that path and put ourselves so to speak, in the crack in the rock. Well, that’s where I’m going to stop for today, and go back to the questions, and see where that takes us.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: So Shelley asks, “Did the people who participated in the golden calf who are not the 3000, just people who like to good party?”

A: Nicely put, a lot of people don’t think about underlying reasons, they just want to have fun. Well, it’s a nice idea and you might be right. I think maybe also one should take it into consideration that people like to go in herds, they like to follow the herd. They like to do what the popular people are doing. This is the culture of the world we live in. Look how many people these pop stars and others can attract far more than any other political event or indeed religious events. So it’s interesting that this is saying something about the nature of the mob, the gang, the group.

Q: Steven, “How does the notion of Hashem blotting out the sinners who worship the golden calf chime with the various meanings of sin. Hebrew implies the missing mark and therefore, there’s a second chance.”

A: Well, I dealt with that before I saw your question, Steven. And yes, the idea is there is a second chance and that plays out here in this whole story.

Q: Yisrael. Hi, Yisrael. “Aaron has not only not held responsible for his part in the golden calf episode. Actually he seems to be rewarded by being appointed the kohen gadol. How do you understand this?”

A: Very, very difficult to understand it. And I have various ways of looking at it. And one of them is this. By tradition, Aaron, as we’ve mentioned before, is known in the Ethics of the Fathers as the person who is or who loves human beings and brings them near to Torah. So Aaron represents something very different to Moses. You would never say of Moses that he goes around trying to repair relationships. And therefore, Aaron represents the humanity, the humanity of the Torah. And that is in a sense what also makes him the right person to be the high priest and to pass that idea on, even though later it was ignored by others. But I think it also explains why we have these three versions of Aaron’s story of what actually happened, what initially happened, then what actually happened, and then what Aaron said happened in which Aaron is excusing himself. And the rabbis go out of their way to justify Aaron’s excuses. But I think the excuses are weak there, not very impressive. And therefore, I’d rather fall back on the idea of what Aaron represents in the human side. Because when we talk about Jewish theology, we talk about the divide between between human beings and God. Interesting, the other word for God, Makom, which means place, some place in every place. And between human beings. And the human element is so important. So that here, we are dealing almost exclusively with the betrayal of God. And we are saying that over and above the question of the betrayal of God, there is a separate sphere of the betrayal of other human beings. And Moses represents this betrayal and the reconciliation with God. And Aaron represents the reconciliation with human beings. And that’s why he is forgiven.

Q: Shelley says, “Why doesn’t taking off jewellery apply to women?”

A: Sometimes applies to both genders and sometimes only men. I agree with you Shelley, that’s an excellent point. And there’s no reason to think this didn’t apply. And therefore, I can only revert to the kind of urban myth. And the urban myth is that, you know, although men like to think they’re in charge, the fact of the matter is it’s women who have a stronger say than we credit them with. And I’ll give you an interesting example of this. You know, that there was a tradition that women should cover their hair. And this is a tradition that goes back, a married women should cover the hair, that goes back long before Judaism appears on the scene. You see it in the garments and clothes that are worn in hot climates in Africa and Arabia, and other places like that. But the Bible doesn’t talk about anything other than that a woman should not, that a woman should not have loose hair. Because loose hair was something that was normally the sign of a loose woman. And so the idea came that to avoid being a loose woman, to be modest, you should cover your hair. And that of course was adopted by nuns in Christianity, and indeed was adopted by many royal families where women were meant to wear headdresses as a sign of their modesty and their status.

As life in mediaeval Christianity and mediaeval Islam went, women covered their hair with a scarf of some kind. The Talmud goes further and says, actually, you know, doesn’t need to be with a scarf. So if you’re carrying a basket on top of your head, you can push your hair up, place the basket on it. But nevertheless, the idea of covering your hair remained a very, very powerful element in Jewish community life. As we moved into the French Revolution and beyond, wigs became very fashionable. And therefore the question was, could a woman wear a wig instead of having to cover her hair with a scarf or something, or in some cases even shave her hair? And in fact, most rabbis at that time said, absolutely not. You can’t wear a sheitel as it says. And the question is, why then did it become so prevalent in central and western Europe to wear a sheitel in very orthodox families? In Eastern Europe, people couldn’t afford sheitel, most people. And so covering their head was usually with a scarf. When you see life in the shtetl, it’s with a scarf around their head. And when initially women started wearing a sheitel, the very orthodox in Eastern Europe who did wear one were expected to cover it with a hat. And in some Hungarian communities, what they did was shave their head, put on a scarf, and sometimes if they were going to wear a sheitel, they would put on a sheitel and with a hat on top of it too, which is what most wives of rabbis do today. And most people when they look at this from a historical point of view say, the reason why women could get away with wearing a sheitel is because they pressurise their husbands to make concessions. Now, whether this is true or just a fanciful theory, I think it probably indicates that, because women wore jewellery much more commonly than men. And you see this, for example, in India today and in other places in Africa, that jewellery is considered to be a special thing for a woman to have. In fact, it’s very, very interesting.

Last week, I was just studying a little part of the Talmud with my son on Tarnit, which talks about a rabbi making sure that his wife was always decorated and looking her best when he came home. And they asked him, “Why are you doing this?” And he said, “Well, I’m doing this to make sure that I only have eyes for her.” Nice idea. But really in theory, if you look at the text here, it does imply that everybody should remove their jewellery.

Q: Does ohel moed mean the same as the mishkan or Moses private tent?

A: Well, that’s the issue. That’s the issue. Here, there seems to be an overlap between them, because ohel moed is used the tent of the covenant to be the tabernacle when the tabernacle is put up. And so we don’t know if this was when the tabernacle was up or not. But maybe it was before and when the tabernacle was then built, the ohel moed was merged into the tabernacle. But then it means probably that Moses did have private quarters. And in fact, in Jerusalem you had the Palace of the King, which maybe where Moses would’ve lived. Then you had the temple where the religious activity took part, and then you had the Lishkat haGazit, the human chamber where the judiciary and the public appeals, and the government, if you like, sat in that position. So I think there was a kind of an evolution of the ohel to the ohel moed to the mishkan that absorbed them in some way together.

Q: Janet, “Does the prohibition of men’s jewellery wearing a chain with the Magen David?”

A: Oh, this is such a big debate. Now you will find that virtually no Haredi men, ultra-religious men will wear jewellery, will wear anything around their neck, or rings on their fingers. Although I’m told in California some do. But all the ones that I have met and grown up with and studied within Yeshiva, they did not wear a Magen David, or a mezuzah, or anything like that. Within the Sephardic world, it became much more common. And so it is more common in the Sephardic world today. And nowadays, here in New York, as in other parts of America, the modern Orthodox tend to be wearing jewellery. And this is a controversial issue. I never allowed or wanted my children, my boys to wear jewellery and neither of them do. But this has become a matter of, if you like, options, possibilities, that people do themselves going beyond the letter of the law in the same way that way that sheitel is in its own way. So you know, people do what they want to do.

Shelley says, “Maybe the people watch Moshe go out the camp to the tent of meeting, because they’re afraid he was going to disappear as he did in Mount Sinai.” That’s an interesting theory, I don’t read that. I don’t see that, but it’s possible.

Yisrael, back again, following the last question and ask, “If the cloud was over Moses’ private tent or over the mishkan, or the tent of meeting, not Moses private tent, as in verse 9.” Again, it’s an excellent point. All designs and all theories are that the cloud was over the mishkan and leading the people as they marched. But when they settled it was both of them fire and cloud were based on the mishkan and not on Moses’ tent. Moses was again in a different position, but you are absolutely right. The text in itself doesn’t make it clear, and there are lots of different interpretations of it. And I guess you choose the one you like. And thank you for your comment and thank you, Carla.

Jill, “Today wedding rings are exchanged as part of wedding ceremony in Orthodox services.” Well, yes, in modern Orthodox services they would be, but could be, but not normally. And certainly not within Haredi. There is no ceremony of exchanging rings in the Haredi world. A man puts a ring only on the finger of the woman. But yes, in some circles, it is being customary to exchange rings. But that’s not a religious requirement, not in the Orthodox world.

Susan Mogul, “For those of you who are using Sefaria and interested in grammar, you can press down on any word in the Sefaria, and end up with a pop-up window with meaning and synonyms.” You know, I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me, we will have to make use of that. Is my hand healed? Am I correct that you heard it? Yes, I had burnt in my hand. Very seriously, second degree burns, and I’m glad to say it’s back to normal now. A little red still, but thank you very much.

And Alfred, “Verse 23, the plural panai meaning faces somewhat problematic in the nekudot or Masoretic are not necessarily in the Septuagint some 500 years earlier to keep the singular moo and not the plural hormone.” It’s interesting that there are different ways grammatically of looking at the text, but I don’t see a problem in having plural words. So I don’t know if that’s the issue that you are referring to. And if not, please clarify, and I will follow it up. If not here then through the internet as we did last time.

Janice, “The story I heard is that women were away because they all had their menses and were away and didn’t give their jewellery, and were rewarded with Rosh Chodesh.” That is not Halakha Jewish law, or it might be a nice idea mentioned in some midrash. But it’s again like many midrashim, they are fanciful. There are a massive collection of different times from different rabbis, different situations. And I honestly, don’t credit it with much significance. “Here’s a reason why my father never allowed me to pierce my ears.” It may be, it may be. There is some resistance, but now I’ve come across Haredi people who do have piercing. So it might have been a cultural thing possible. And thank you Rita, and thank you, Jill.

And please, God, we will meet next week. Bye.